American Sports Writer

Today’s game

Southern Miss coach Donnie Tyndall knows that a basketball game may not mean much when compared to a missing roof or long hours without gas or electricity.

But Tyndall and his Golden Eagles are hoping that Southern Miss’ Conference USA match-up with Tulane at 7 p.m. today at Green Coliseum may provide a bit of solace for a university and city dealing with the aftermath of Sunday’s destructive tornado.

“We certainly hope for a couple hours, the community can come out and get away from all the negativity that has happened in the last few days and pull for our team and get their minds off what else is going in their lives,” Tyndall said.

USM suffered heavy damage late Sunday afternoon along the southern edge of its campus when an EF-4 tornado traveled along Hardy Street, blowing out windows and sending roofs airborne.

Nearly 600 structures in Lamar County and Hattiesburg were affected, with about another 100 apartments deemed uninhabitable. Thousands lost power, though most had been reconnected by Monday.

“I want to send out my heartfelt condolences to all the families and people who have lost their homes or had damage to their homes,” Tyndall said. “It’s certainly a traumatic experience and a tough situation.”

None of the university’s athletic facilities were affected, and Tyndall said none of the residences of any players, coaches or support staff associated with the basketball program suffered any damage.

“We’re very, very fortunate from that regard,” Tyndall said.

What does concern Tyndall has been the players’ focus in practice the past few days.

“Not to make light of it, but we got hit with our own tornado with Memphis Saturday, then go through the real tornado,” Tyndall said. “I think our guys’ minds have been on a lot of different things, and to be honest, our practices probably haven’t been what we had hoped they would be.

“So, we’re certainly a little bit anxious going against Tulane when we’ve not had great game preparation the last couple of days.”

Tulane (16-8, 4-5 C-USA) has yo-yo’d through its conference schedule, but picked up its first road victory against C-USA completion Saturday. The Green Wave rallied from 19 points down with 8 minutes, 22 seconds left to play to claim an 84-80 win at Houston.

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“They are very, very similar to us,” Tyndall said. “They’re undersized, but very athletic. They’re very hard-playing and they’re very well coached.

“They’re going to make you score over the top of them in the half court. They don’t give up easy layups in transition, and they really make you earn every basket. It’s going to be a tough game.”

USM (18-6, 7-2) is riding a two-game losing streak, including a 89-76 loss to Memphis that snapped a 23-game winning streak at Green Coliseum and dropped the Golden Eagles two games behind the front-running Tigers with seven C-USA games to play.

“The only thing we can do is get back to practice, and get back to what we’ve worked on all year,” said senior guard Dwayne Davis, who scored a game-high 25 points against Memphis. “As a captain, I’ve got to make sure that I bring it first and then everybody else, all the players, are on the same (page) as me.”

USM’s losses came by two points at Central Florida where the Golden Eagles shot just 36 percent from the floor and then against a Memphis team that its own coach said played one of its best games of the year.

“We’re 7-2 in conference play, 18-6 overall, and if you would have said at the beginning of the year that we would have those records, overall and in conference play, not many people would have believed that,” Tyndall said. “Our conference losses, we’ve lost to two of the top three preseason teams.

“So I’m not discouraged. I’m disappointed that we haven’t won the last two games, and maybe didn’t play as well as we could have or should have. But our team is competing and playing hard.”